Done It Again
by fairwinds09
Summary: After Kate leaves for a date with another guy, Gibbs is musing over his own tangled feelings.


Title: Done It Again

Rating: K+

Spoilers: "Black Water"

Disclaimer: I don't own any of them. Though Gibbs currently occupies the #1 spot on my birthday list. :)

A/N: This is just a little ficlet that came to me after watching "Black Water" a few nights ago. I kept wondering what Gibbs might have been thinking as Kate went off on a date with another guy, and this was the result. Hope you like it!!

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Well, it looks like I've gone and done it again.

It's a habit now, one almost as strong as my coffee addiction, my inability to keep up relationships, and my fondness for hand tools and bourbon. A cycle of denial and evasion and self-deception that keeps pulling me down a little more each time I fall in. But maybe I'll just keep at it until finally, one time, I get it right.

Because I'm getting really, really good at pushing away the one woman I've truly wanted in a long, long time.

I know she's not indifferent to me. I've seen it before—hell, I've been through four marriages and three divorces. I know when a woman's interested. And she's looking, all right. The little sidelong glances, the sly remarks, the wordless chemistry that seems to spark between the two of us when we get within about five feet or so of each other. But I told her that she couldn't pull that kind of crap at NCIS, and I meant it. So I haven't made a move, and neither has she.

In my head, I know it's best that way. I know that romance between agents never works. I know that you can't keep your mind on your job when you're worried too much about the person standing next to you. I know that you invariably end up making stupid mistakes, missing important signals, that sooner or later you screw up and somebody's life could be hanging in the balance. In my head, I know all that.

But my gut—my famous gut—keeps telling me something else. Every time she walks in a room with that sassy sway to her hips, every time she wears one of those intolerably tempting sweaters to work—the ones that show just enough to tantalize but not enough to actually reveal—every time I catch a whiff of her perfume, my gut tells me I'm a fool. Not just a fool. An old, grouchy bastard of a fool who for once in his life has the chance to find out what happiness with a woman is and instead is slowly, systematically pushing her to the corners of his life. That's what my gut is telling me.

And yet it seems to make no difference—none at all. Because here I am, sitting at my desk in a darkened bullpen, my lamp one of the few still on this late at night, wondering what the hell I've just done.

I told her to go on a date with that guy. Hell, I ordered her to. Like any seasoned investigator, I took the information I had and matched it with the results I needed. And she was the easiest way to get at the solution.

I ignored that telltale clenching in my gut when Tony was teasing her about the McAllister suspect. I knew that it was none of my business if she was flirting with some guy she met on a case. Tony does it all the time—and while I occasionally smack the back of his head for it, most of the time I figure it's his funeral if he wants to make out with a murder suspect. After all, it's not as if he'll have much of a problem avoiding following up on the first date. They don't usually take dinner reservations in jail.

But hearing that she'd been attracted to him—that she'd gotten that little light in her eyes that I see every once in a while for _me_, that she'd smiled at him and chatted with him and acted like "a girl with a high-school crush," stung me somewhere I didn't even know existed anymore. I suddenly felt betrayed, nettled, envious beyond belief. I wanted to hunt McAllister down and threaten him within an inch of his life if he so much as glanced her way again, and I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her within an inch of _her_ life if she even considered flirting with him again. And because I had no right to any of those emotions—as her boss, as her coworker, or as her friend—I just kept my mouth shut and let Tony ride her about her newfound beau.

I wish I'd left it at that. I wish I'd had the good sense, and the common decency, to tamp down my anger and my hurt and let it go. But I couldn't just let it sit there. And so when the moment was right I saw my opportunity, I sighted in, and I took the shot. I've got my revenge. Kate's on a date with a suspect for murder, and she can be sure he won't take it as a come-on when she has to cuff him and haul him in at the end of the evening. But I'm starting to understand more and more that old proverb about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Because I can't stand it, sitting here and wondering what they're doing and where they're going and how he's looking at her right this moment. She looked beautiful when she left tonight—some skinny excuse for a dress hugging those tempting curves, her hair soft and loose around her face, her eyes dark and shining and her lips painted invitingly. She was teasing DiNozzo about it, asking him if she looked all right. Like the clown he is, he messed up her hair and pulled down her dress straps and generally made her look ridiculous. But even all messed up from Tony's less-than-tender ministrations, she still looked gorgeous.

And because I'm a jealous fool, he's the one sitting across from her at a table in some little restaurant or holding her hand at some bar, telling her how beautiful she is and how lucky he is to get to spend time with her. He has no idea how true either of those statements are. Because no matter how this investigation turns out—whether or not he committed the murder, whether or not he gets arrested, whether or not they end up seeing each other again—one thing is still inescapably obvious. For one night, Thomas McAllister is getting to go on a date with Kate Todd. That's more than I'll ever allow myself. And I hate him for it.

I know there's a possibility that he didn't do it. That private detective has already raised my hackles more than once, and not just because he's poking his nose in places where it doesn't belong. Everyone knows that I hate people messing with my cases, and he's done far too much as it is. Just a few more moves and I think I'll be on to him. But I won't know for sure until tonight is over. If it's him, I'm sincerely looking forward to clamping the cuffs on myself. It won't make up for what I've already been through tonight, but at least it'll help.

It's almost time. DiNozzo and I are heading over to McAllister's house to check out his father's old gun collection. When we have what we need, we'll make the call and complete the arrest. But as I open my drawer and pull out my weapon, as I holster it on and whistle for Tony to bring the sedan around front, I can't shake the clenching feeling in my gut, the silent warning that all is not as it seems to be. The gnawing realization keeps intruding that I can set her up on phony dates, I can arrest the guys she's interested in, I can sabotage her social life, but no matter what I do, I can never be the one to finally capture Caitlin Todd.

And so for the rest of the evening, as we check out the gun collection, discover the private detective, arrest McAllister, arrest the detective, release McAllister, and wind up the whole sordid mess at 2:30 in the morning, I try to ignore that churning in my gut, silence the little voice that keeps telling me it's no use no matter how hard I try. And when everything's been taken care of, explanations said and apologies proffered, I get my come-uppance, at long last. I watch her walk with him to the elevator, overhear him offer her dessert in New York, watch the two of them slip past Tony into the elevator with matching grins on their faces. And I know my face is harder than granite as I reach over to my desk lamp and switch it off, gather up my coat and head out the door on my way to an empty house and a bottle of bourbon in a dusty basement.

Yeah, it looks like I've done it again.  


End file.
